THE CASE IN QUESTION

No motive, no means and no opportunity. The lack of the investigation's categorical trinity, that undermines Amaral's thesis.

There is not a single, credible, coherent account of how the parents (and/or friends) could or would have committed the crime of disposing of Madeleine's body. Nor is there any evidence that they did so. No case, indicative or otherwise, could be constructed by the PT police, and none has been subsequently by any of the Internet Colombo's following this case.

We accordingly have 2 anti camps: Those who simply invent outlandish stories piled on top of each other to account for the key questions. And those who simply avoid them, dwelling instead on their suspicion's and snippets of information, considered entirely in isolation of they key questions.

The dog alerts, the samples, the forensic analysis - all have been put under the microscope by those less qualified than the experts who conducted the investigation, and in every case, our forumista's consider themselves qualified to cast doubt upon the actual findings.

This is wishful thinking with no more credibility than the crazy conspiracy theories. It is all there in the reports: No evidence; not only no evidence, but no expert opinion backing up the, forum experts. Martin grime does not say: "No forensic evidence but my dogs are never wrong and I consider this highly indicative that a corpse was present". No, he says the alerts are only 'suggestive' of contaminant and that "No evidential or intelligence reliability can be made from them". Unless or until one of our forum 'expert's' can produce the credentials to challenge the findings under peer review conditions, I think I'll stick with the real experts, and anyone who does otherwise is a fool.

And even if you believe your suspicions to have sufficient weight to cast doubt on the experts, you still need to account for the basics: who, when, why, where, how.

A word on demeanour, because this keys into character. Its often claimed that the McCanns demeanour was inappropriate for the events. If you actually read the accounts of those around them, who have seen them, over time, it seems to be entirely within normal range: Hope, despair, grief, determination; and caused no suspicions amongst those qualified to comment. To maintain the ‘demeanour’ accusation, demands that those prejudiced against the McCanns, selectively analyse mere moments in the thousands of hours that have passed since the events, and pin entire character histories and accusations to these fragments of time. Caught smiling – must be guilty. Reported to be crying – must be acting.

The illogicality and sheer nastiness of this particular line of suspicion in incredible. There is no manual on how to respond to a tragedy, and history is full of examples of people reacting in all sorts of ways. Rarely can it ever be analysed as an indicator of complicity, and in the few cases that it can be, there is a substantial and clear evidence base analysed over time by those qualified to do so. Not by the prejudiced who hate the sight of them, and twist anything and everything to suit their discriminating agenda.

More significantly, there is absolutely no character history to indicate any of these people have the psychological mind set to both commit a terrible crime (perfectly) and then go on to parade their criminality in our faces though setting up a fraudulent fund and barefaced maintaining the lie over a substantial period of time. Any ‘normal’ person attempting to do this would have collapsed under the strain. Only a psychopath could maintain such a level of incongruity, and there is nothing in either character history (let alone both or more) to indicate psychopathy. Psychopaths cannot sustain careers, jobs, friendships, relationships; they lie, cheat and damage people around them. Anyone who has ever been ‘close’ to a psychopath knows it, even if they cannot put a diagnostic term upon it. Psychopaths are not created overnight, they leave a long history trail behind them, and there is nothing in the McCann family histories to indicate anything of the sort, and significant indicators to rule them out of this category. These are facts.

Finally, statistics: Statistically the likelihood of the parents pulling off the most successful and audacious crime in living memory under the circumstances we know is incalculable, because it would be unprecedented, therefore it is statistically far less likely than an abduction. Its that simple.

And still, there is motive, means and opportunity to be accounted for.

No motive:Most that have ever been offered -such as risk of loss of career, status etc, are predicated upon a psychopath’s response to a situation, and there is no evidence to substantiate this, nothing to suggest these people would be anything but devastated and immobilised by grief had they found their child dead. Accordingly, more and more bizarre motives are invented, all without any evidence base. Illegal drugs, swinging, paedophilia, murder. Nothing to support any of these claims.

No means:How would these parents have disposed of a body, unseen? Only by resorting to methods that are again predicated upon an assumption of psychopathy. Stuffing bodies into bags, burying them on the beach, digging them up again, freezing them, driving around with a corpse in your car, nipping off between media appearances to dig graves without even breaking sweat, wandering brazenly through PDL openly with the corpse of your child in your arms. All without being spotted, or your actions being discovered, or the body ever being found. None of this is credible, not for one moment.

No opportunity:To have done all or any the above would take an army of resources and local knowledge, it would certainly take more than two people (thereby increasing the unliklihood of it having happened), it would have taken ‘staging’ of proportions the opera house would struggle to muster, since no person was absent from others view for anything like the time required to pull these stunts off. It just didn't happen.